Formal and informal governance networks: Diabetes care in Australia and India

Abstract

The concept of networks has gained interest in public administration and management. They address concerns such as the coordination of multiple actors within the policy process. Networks take both formal and informal forms. As the integration of formal and informal networks in public service delivery is gaining traction, this paper uses the example of diabetes care in Australia and India to provide an analytical framework to examine one of the ways such integration of networks take place. Diabetes, a chronic long‐term disease, poses to be a global problem with a high rate of diagnosis with implications for public health expenditure. A multi‐disciplinary team, which comprises both formal and informal categories, is required to manage diabetes. This paper highlights the integration of networks in diabetes care in different institutional and cultural settings. For such form of integration of networks to work, collaboration among the various actors is important. Lessons learnt from diabetes care will be relevant for other long‐term chronic conditions to help reduce the human resource and financial burden. The analytical framework developed based on the example of diabetes care will provide useful lessons for examining the mechanics and dynamics of the integration between formal and informal networks in the field of public administration and management.

Barriers and enablers of coordination across healthcare system levels

“…Gulati et al, 2012), studies addressing coordination across these system levels are scarce (Vargas et al, 2016). Therefore, although a substantial body of research has addressed care coordination across professional and organizational domains, often locally or related to a specific condition (e.g., Gadolin et al, 2022; Gorin et al, 2017; Karam et al, 2018; Røsstad et al, 2013; Schultz et al, 2013; Ugyel, 2019; Vázquez et al, 2017), research addressing determinants of actors' coordination across healthcare system levels remains essential (Hughes et al, 2020; Raus et al, 2020; Suter et al, 2017; Vargas et al, 2016). Whereas coordination across system levels is always pivotal in order to ensure efficient healthcare provision, the COVID‐19 pandemic has made the effects of fragmentized healthcare systems even more palpable in terms of illustrating the hindrance it constitutes for coordination across healthcare system levels (e.g., Armocida et al, 2020; Khalid & Ali, 2020).…”